Yahoo-Bing search partnership may have doomed Bartz

News broke early Wednesday morning of the dismissal of Carol Bartz as Yahoo CEO after a 31 months on the job, which many speculate is connected to the Yahoo-Bing search deal she oversaw. SEO marketers will want to continue to follow Yahoo developments to see whether this shake up will change the search landscape yet again.

During her tenure atop Yahoo, Bartz oversaw the agreement with Microsoft to shift the management of Yahoo’s search to Bing, while Yahoo managed sales and advertising for both organizations’ search products.

For Microsoft, the partnership with Yahoo boosted its market share in terms of search, according to market research firm comScore. The company’s most recent study of the market found that Yahoo, at 16.1 percent, and Microsoft, at 14.4 percent, trailed Google substantially. However, the agreement essentially means Microsoft’s search engine powers more than 30 percent of queries on the web.

For businesses constantly updating their SEO content, it’s critical they understand the varying criteria search engines use to compile rankings. With Bing handling Yahoo queries, SEO firms only had to account for algorithms from two prominent engines – Google and Bing. Although Microsoft’s search agreement with Yahoo is set to last for a decade, it’s unclear whether the terms are binding, and Bartz’s departure could mean a major shift for enterprise SEO campaigns.